Charlie Kirk (2:06)

At 21?

Joe Mitchell (2:06)

Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (2:07)

And I met you, I think almost two years ago, right?

Joe Mitchell (2:09)

A year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. A year from September. So at an event in Des Moines,

Charlie Kirk (2:14)

like right before I was going to Rome.

Joe Mitchell (2:16)

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So I remember. I saw that you were a speak at an event in Des Moines. Now, I actually had this idea that we're going to talk about today, the Run Gen Z. And I had this idea pop up in my head. We need to start this coalition of, you know, young conservatives mentoring the next generation of young conservatives. Right. And so I saw that you're gonna be at this event in Des Moines, knew the people throwing it, and so, you know, asked if I could come and, you know, they let me come and they introduced me to you and, you know, automatically we started clicking and, you know, you're right, here's my number. I want you to come to SAS and speak at my conference or whatever else. So, yeah, it was about a year and a half ago that we met each other and I came to SAS 2019 and spoke and was there again in 2020 and had a breakout session. Spoke.

Charlie Kirk (2:57)

So you got elected a 21? Yeah. State Rep. Yeah. How many state reps are there in Iowa?

Joe Mitchell (3:02)

So there's 100 state reps, there's 50 state senators.

Charlie Kirk (3:04)

And so you were one of 100. Were you the youngest in Iowa at the time?

Joe Mitchell (3:07)

Yes, sir.

Charlie Kirk (3:08)

And one of the youngest of all time.

Joe Mitchell (3:09)

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (3:10)

And so my family's originally from Marshalltown, Iowa. Sure.

Joe Mitchell (3:13)

Okay.

Charlie Kirk (3:13)

And so got some Iowa roots.

Joe Mitchell (3:15)

Yeah, I love that.

Charlie Kirk (3:16)

And so. But you made the decision at age 21 to run for office and win. Walk us through that process, how that, that's not something every 21 year old's doing.

Joe Mitchell (3:25)

Sure, sure, yeah. So, you know, growing up, you know, my parents were never political. Right. They were always Republican. Right. We watched Fox News, you know, things of that nature, but they never had given to a political candidate. They'd never been involved in the county party. My, My parents are small business people. Right. My dad started a small business when I was, you know, five years old. Started a manufacturing plant, you know, with nothing. And I seen him struggle but, you know, ultimately achieve the American dream. And so, you know, that had always been the drive behind, you know, my, you know, aspirations in politics and, you know, wanting to be in there to make a change because I seen how the government could both help and hurt small business owners like my dad. Right. And so, you know, the more successful he would get, they take more money away. And a personal thing to me is my folks have a 501C3 where we do missions all over the world. So they actually give 50% of their profits to their charity where we help people all over the world with healthcare and education and all kinds of different stuff. And I saw how my parents could do more with their money than the government could, right? And so that started getting me intrigued in school and, you know, American history and government, whatever else. And so When I was 17, I was a senior in high school, I went up to the Capitol to be a page in Iowa House. And so for those of you that don't know what the page program is, it's like an internship for high school seniors. It's a great program. Lots of state legislators have that program. So if you are a kid in high school right now, really consider looking into a program like that. But anyways, went up to the Capitol to be a page when I was 17 and that was my first real introduction to politics, right? I was up there and I got to learn how the process worked. I got to network with different state legislators from all around the state and that's when I got the political bug. And so went to Drake University in Des Moines. And so when I was there, I actually studied business because I'm an entrepreneur at heart like my dad is. But I kept on working at the capital, right? So I worked in the state senate, I worked for Governor Kim Reynolds, worked for Senator Joni Ernst and at the U.S. capitol. And then it came down to where my predecessor, who had been there for 24 years, decided to retire. And, you know, my whole time working at the Capitol, you know, it was great being a staffer, it was great being able to help, you know, the legislators I worked for out. But at the end of the day, I wanted to make the change. You know, I wanted to implement the ideas I thought were best for my community. And so when my predecessor, you know, decided to retire, it was one of those feelings. I was like, this might be my moment. You know, the minimum age to run in Iowa for state representative is 21. So I was 20 at the time. But I knew I'd be 21 by, by election day. And so, you know, that's when I had this epitome like, you know, do I run or do I not? And it was, you know, it was scary, right? It was like, you know, what are my friends going to think? What's my family going to think of me if I, if I run for, you know, state rep at the age of 21? You know what I mean? Like, who are people gonna think I am? And ultimately made that decision to run, ultimately made that decision to turn that activism into action and, you know, take that step forward. And so I had a four way primary. And so the primary was, was against several different people, but one in particular that was pretty much picked up by the party. Right. You know, it was a, it was a female in her 40s who, you know, had, you know, good name idea in the community and whatever else. And so she was kind of the chosen one. And that was fine and dandy and all, but I went out and knocked 2,000 doors. I made hundreds of phone calls to, you know, potential voters in my district and won my primary by 100 votes. And so. But what that proved to me is, first of all, she didn't go out and do any work, she didn't knock any doors. She just relied on her name ID and the signs they had up or whatever else. But what I did is I went straight to the voters and made the case why there needs to be new blood in the government in politics today. Because as we've seen, you know, the generation before us and the generations before us, you know, have put us in this mess. And so we need young people, particularly young conservatives, to be able, you know, to push forward and be the new voice for our country.

Charlie Kirk (7:40)

So you got elected at 21.

Joe Mitchell (7:41)

Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (7:41)

Now you're 23, two term, serving state rep. And now you're on a mission to get more young people run for office. Tell us about that.

Joe Mitchell (7:49)

Yeah, so like I talked about a year and a half ago when I met you, I had started having this vision of, you know, we need more young conservatives in politics. Right. We need more young conservatives getting elected not only to the state legislators, but also, you know, to municipal elected officials too. You know, city councils, county commissioners, school boards. Right. Because we've seen how important those municipal offices play now since the pandemic hit. Right. I mean, school boards, city councils, mayors, they have so much control over our lives and it's completely crazy. And so a lot of times though, there's a rift where there's not a lot of conservatives that run for those offices. Right. A lot of people, they're just doing other things. They don't think about why we need young, strong conservatives to be running for those offices. So what I created was Run Gen Z and stands for Run Generation Z. And the purpose of it is to get more young conservatives elected to office. But what we do at Run Generation Z is we train you, give you a mentor that's already an elected official, that's a young person and we help you be successful. Right. You know, when I was starting out, when other one, my other co founders that are all, you know, conservatives under 25 elected the state legislators when we were starting out, you know, we didn't have that moral support around us of young conservatives that are already elected to office. We thought we were on our own. We thought we were the only young person that age that, you know, was running for office. And so, you know, that's. That's not encouraging, Right? And so that's what we're doing is we're empowering, encouraging other young conservatives with our stories to say, hey, if we can do it, you can do it. And that's exactly what we did at SAS here a couple weeks ago, right? So we went to sas and it was our first conference that we went to. We had a booth there, right? We had a booth there, and we had almost 200. 200 young conservatives at SAS sign up and say, I want to run for office now. Because you guys did it. And we just stood by that booth and we just talked to every kid that came.

Charlie Kirk (9:47)

Every type of office.

Joe Mitchell (9:48)

Every type of office. Yeah. We just said, you know, you need to be thinking about doing something right? Like writing Facebook posts and ranting on Twitter doesn't help. I mean, like, sometimes it does, but it doesn't do anything compared to if you're actually running for office, instilling those conservative policies and. And your state legislators on your city councils.

Charlie Kirk (10:07)

And so we at Turning Point Action are being supportive of what you guys are doing.

Joe Mitchell (10:11)

We love it.

Charlie Kirk (10:11)

And we wanna help support you.

Joe Mitchell (10:12)

We appreciate that.

Charlie Kirk (10:13)

And so there's a lot of young people that are listening to this right now, a lot of older people that are saying, I love it, but I feel like I'm losing my country. It's all over here. You are 23. I'm 27. We're not that far apart. And we're like, no, we gotta act more. We gotta fix our voting system. We get it, okay? We understand the problems. But we're Americans. It makes us different than the Belgians and the French, is that we don't complain. We do stuff in this country. Right? So what is your message to the people that are apathetic, cynical, pessimistic?

Joe Mitchell (10:41)

My message to everyone listening right now is that we have a group of young patriots right now in this country that are ready to run for office. And that might be you right now listening. And we want you to check out what we're doing. We want you to go online to our website, rungenz.com, visit our Facebook page, rungenz.com yes, go to our Facebook page, ungenz. Go to our Twitter page, ungenz. Or Instagram as well. Well, but we want you guys to Be involved. We want you guys to fill out the form we have online to be a candidate. We want every single person listening to this podcast right now to be a candidate for Gen Z.

Charlie Kirk (11:16)

There can be other people that.

Joe Mitchell (11:17)

Yes, yeah.

Charlie Kirk (11:18)

Focus on Gen Z, but you can help, you know, pepper around other people. They're 28, 29, 30.

Joe Mitchell (11:22)

Yeah. And we don't have, you know, you know, if you're 26, you know, we're helping you out. Right. I mean, this is, the energy, though,

Charlie Kirk (11:27)

is coming from Gen Z.

Joe Mitchell (11:29)

This is a broader theme. Right. It's, we want young conservatives to be running for office. And so, you know, every single person, you know, listening to this podcast, you can do it. That's, that's my message, is you can do it, too. And so, you know, we, we just, we're not trained to think that way. But that's what we're trying to do at Run Gen Z is to let you guys know that, you know, if you are passionate about this country, you're passionate about what's going on right now, there is hope, and that's what we're here for.

Charlie Kirk (11:55)

So you're in Iowa. President Trump won by seven points.

Joe Mitchell (11:58)

Yeah. Eight. And a half. Yeah, and a half. Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:00)

And one of the reasons why you see states change is all of a sudden, you see precincts change.

Joe Mitchell (12:05)

Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:06)

And you see counties change. So a lot of people email us, and I don't mean to beat up our audience. I mean, they're, they're understandably a little bit deflated.

Joe Mitchell (12:12)

Yeah. Now. Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:13)

I mean, things are going to get, they're going to become a horror show.

Joe Mitchell (12:15)

Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:15)

Right. And we have to find hope and optimism and do action. Right. And people are emailing us a lot. Freedom. Charlie. Kirk.com. and they say, charlie, I don't feel as if I can change the state of Arizona myself. But, Joe, Iowa used to be a battleground state.

Joe Mitchell (12:31)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:32)

Now it's a deep red state. The trifecta, right. You have the House, the Senate, the

Joe Mitchell (12:36)

governors had for four years, too, two

Charlie Kirk (12:38)

Republican senators, and Trump has won both in 16 and 20. A lot of it's because of grassroots patriots like you that rose up, started to knock on doors, make phone calls, tell the story of Iowa, which, by the way, no allegations of voter fraud. Pretty secure elections, I would say, right?

Joe Mitchell (12:52)

It is. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie Kirk (12:53)

And no one really ever got into any of the funny business of Iowa, if I'm not mistaken. Mistaken. Where there's other states that are just a catastrophe. Right. Walk us through how Iowa has become this deep red state and I think it's because of people like you that have just risen up and take like, I'm going to change this state or at least change my neighborhood.

Joe Mitchell (13:09)

Yeah. So what I would like to tell people about Iowa is that House Republicans right Now we represent 97 out of 99 counties in Iowa. 97 out of 99 counties.

Charlie Kirk (13:19)

We represent Iowa City, maybe.

Joe Mitchell (13:21)

Yeah. We represent either the whole portion or part of the portion of that county Democrats represent. I think it's about around 10. Would just be a portion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're split up in different districts and stuff, whatever else. But that's what you're talking about. You're talking about that. You know, we've had this message in Iowa that we're going to stand up for the working people of the state. You know what I mean? And so, you know, this week we started session in Iowa, right? We started back at session. And so, you know, on opening day, normally, historically, you know, the precedent has been, you know, this is a uniting day. Right? This is a day or where, you know, Democrat, Republican, we're opening up session, we're going to work for Iowans, whatever else, you know what I mean?

Charlie Kirk (14:01)

And then you fight later.

Joe Mitchell (14:02)

Yeah, and then you fight later. That did not happen this year. The minority party, the Democrats came out and just started throwing hands. They started, number one, started blaming Iowa Republicans for what happened at the Capitol last Wednesday. Started talking about how, you know, our biggest, how our biggest problem in Iowa is climate change. That was our biggest thing, okay? So it wasn't about working class families getting back to work. The pandemic, it wasn't about, you know, you know, wages. It wasn't about, you know, the pandemic. So it's, it's, it was, it was crazy to me, you know what I mean? But it was just for me and my colleagues, though, you know, on my side of the aisle, it was, this is why they lose elections. They don't get it. You know what I mean? Like this year, so this year in Iowa house, it was 53, 47 last year right before the elections. And so there was a lot of noise about how the Iowa Democrats are gonna take back the House because Theresa

Charlie Kirk (14:51)

Greenfield and all that stuff.

Joe Mitchell (14:52)

So we had millions and million of dollars coming from Silicon Valley and New York into the Iowa election. So it was staggering, the numbers of out of state money from that Democrats were pouring in. And so, you know, we had our hands tied. And so we were pretty much written off. They said, you know, The Iowa Republicans, they are losing the House. Right. We ended up picking six seats up and they didn't win. They didn't flip one district. The Democrats did not flip one district. We flipped six. And Joanie won decisively and Joni won by seven points.

Charlie Kirk (15:20)

And that was supposed to be a tough spot.

Joe Mitchell (15:22)

They said two weeks before the election that she was down 12 points.

Charlie Kirk (15:26)

Unbelievable.

Joe Mitchell (15:27)

So I mean the thing is that they don't learn from their mistakes. I mean these people in Iowa, they wanted to hear about how we're going to help their family, how they're going to be able to pay their mortgage and their car payment and send their kids to college. They don't want to hear about these fringe ideas that the Democrats have been displaying. And so it works on the east and west coast. Right. And these other places that they've been campaigning, but it doesn't work in the Midwest. And that's what they're starting to find out. You know what I mean?

Charlie Kirk (15:55)

A deep red state.

Joe Mitchell (15:56)

Yeah, it's becoming a deep red state. And that's because of the ideals that we've been pushing. It's America first vision.

Charlie Kirk (16:02)

So a lot of young people are listening right now and they say, ah, running for office, it's tough. Make the case why they need to run and they have to. Even if you run for the supervisor of the dog catcher, whatever it is, you gotta run for something.

Joe Mitchell (16:17)

My message would be, you know, we do not preserve America. And I don't say change America. Democrats want to change America. We do not preserve America and the ideas we have here in the Constitution unless you run. Because right now people aren't running. People are discouraged. And we are the generation of hope. We are the generation that's going to bring this country back to where it is and preserve the ideals that we have here, not change it. We don't want to change America. We don't want to change the Constitution. We want to preserve what we have. Because what our founders came up with was a great document, you know what I mean? And so we need to make sure that our generation is the generation of patriots that rises up and make sure that we preserve what we have here and preserve the American dream.

Charlie Kirk (16:56)

So talk about it. Run Gen Z. You have other young legislatures too, you found and other Aaron Carpenter. Talk about some of these people.

Joe Mitchell (17:03)

Yeah. So my co founders of the organization, so it was actually four state representatives were the co founders of the organization. Two from Florida, Josie Tomkow, Amber Mariano, both elected under 25. Caleb Hanna from West Virginia, he was elected to 18. He was elected to the state legislator at 18. Caleb's amazing guy. And then Joe Alexander from New Hampshire. So Joe is elected at 25 in New Hampshire House, I believe. But what I did was I knew about all of them or had met him before, and I reached out to him, I said, hey, I have this vision of us founding this organization of being mentors for the next generation of conservatives that want to run for office. Every single one of them was on board. And so that's the mission. That's what we've grown. That's why Aaron's come on board. Right. Aaron's a city councilman from Ohio. And so just forming this coalition of young conservatives that want to mentor the next generation. And we've done that. It's organic. Right. It's something that should have been done a long time ago. I always say it's kind of like the big brothers, Big sisters of politics. That's what we're trying to do. And it's a natural thing and that's what we're all about at Run Gen Z. And it's going to make a difference. I don't think it's going to make a difference. It is going to make a difference.

Charlie Kirk (18:18)

Very good. Rungenz.com yeah. And how can people follow you or get involved what you're doing? Like just you personally?

Joe Mitchell (18:24)

Yeah. So my twitter handle is oyrep84 and then my Facebook page is Joe Mitchell for Iowa House. But then again, please go visit our website. Like Charlie just said, rungenz.com and our Twitter handle and Facebook ungenz and you'll

Charlie Kirk (18:41)

be governor of Iowa maybe one day or something. We'll see.

Joe Mitchell (18:43)

I don't know. I don't know. We'll see about that sometime.

Charlie Kirk (18:45)

Very good. Well, Joe, keep up the great work. Everyone listening. Convert that sadness into action. Do something about it. Go to rungenz.com I'm totally behind it. We're helping financially. Attorney Point Action. We're helping any way we can. So get behind it. Make a plan to go run for something. School board, city council, water reclamation, district, abatement, all that stuff exists, especially this spring. If you are in a position of sadness, convert it into action. Put points on the board this spring. These municipal elections are so important. Yeah, they're so important.

Joe Mitchell (19:20)

That's what we're here for.

Charlie Kirk (19:21)

And the turnout so low in these elections this spring.

Joe Mitchell (19:23)

Yeah.

Charlie Kirk (19:24)

So go and turn out everybody. All right, everybody, thanks so much. Run Gen Z. Com. Joe, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you want to get involved with Turning Point usa, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's culture war, go to tpusa.com tpusa.com email us your questions. Freedom Charlie Kirk.com and if you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com support thanks so much for listening everybody. God bless.